


things my heart used to know

by wordsandstars



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Anastasia, F/M, background Octavia Blake/Raven Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4286142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsandstars/pseuds/wordsandstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke’s a princess, his head says. (She was an orphan for longer, his heart replies.)</p>
<p>She hated him when they met. (He hated her, too.)</p>
<p>She could’ve said so many things outside that door, but all she did was thank him. (All he did was wish her luck.)</p>
<p>♬</p>
<p>Bellamy, along with his sister, is looking for the reward money for bringing the lost princess back to her father. Clarke's looking for her family.</p>
<p>(Both of them get more than they bargained for.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	things my heart used to know

**Author's Note:**

> title's from "Once Upon a December," a song from the movie Anastasia. i hope you all enjoy :)

Even though it’s been ten years, Bellamy still remembers the day the palace fell, its royal family along with it. Remembers every detail.

He remembers the panic of everyone around him, and the bone-deep relief that he felt instead, knowing Octavia was safe at home with their mother, a town away from all the chaos surrounding him. The mob that’s broken through the gates is only going after the royal family, sure, but they’re not exactly being kind to the servants.

Through the fray of people running desperately towards the doors, he sees two people turn, hears a voice cut through the panic and yell out a name. It’s the Tsarina’s husband, the Tsar, yelling for the princess, and Bellamy doesn’t really think about what he does next.

He only stays in the hall long enough to figure out where the hell the princess is going, and then he slips into the passages only servants use to get there, too.

Inside the room—a playroom, for the princess and her siblings—are the princess and her father. She has her hand locked around something, but when he grabs her father’s coat and pulls them both into the servant’s corridor to escape, it falls to the ground.

“My music box!” she gasps, but he shoves her back inside and shuts the hidden door behind him before she can even reach for it. It’s a bare second later that mob members come looking in for them, and when he denies ever seeing the princess or her father, he gets the back of his gun to the head for his efforts.

Later, when he wakes up with his head aching in an empty palace, before he finds out that Arcadia’s royal family has all been taken prisoner but the two he helped, he sees the music box, blue and gold and glittering in the new day’s sun shining through the window, and he picks it up.

Like the memories, he keeps it for ten years.

_♬♬_

“I swear to God, we should just get me a blonde wig and pretend _I’m_ the princess,” Octavia groans, slumped over the table they’re seated at.

“Your eyes are the wrong colour,” he tells her absently, looking over his notes from the audition that’s just ended. Bellamy’s not stupid, he knows it’s hopeless and they’re looking superbly fucked at the moment, but that doesn’t stop him from looking them over again.

“Bite me,” Octavia replies, but it lacks real heat. She sighs loudly and gets up from the chair, starting to gather their supplies. Gloomily, she says, “I wanted to go to Polis.”

“We’ll find someone, O,” he says, helping her. She huffs and doesn’t reply, and they leave the little staged hall, heading back to the abandoned palace. He’s not really sure why they stay there, after all these years. When their mother died, they went there simply because they had nowhere else to go, and Octavia had always wanted to see it, never having got the chance before the family fell. He can’t figure out why they still stay there.

Probably because they still have nowhere else to go.

They’re not there long, just long enough to shed coats and gloves and hats, before he hears something. Octavia waves him off, but after a few minutes she hears the telltale sounds of someone in another room too, and they get up to investigate.

In the grand hall is a young woman, eyes half shut and murmuring to herself, but she falls headlong out of her thoughts when he yells down at her, and immediately sprints towards the stairs that eventually lead outside. He and Octavia tumble off down after her, finally getting her to stop in front of the family portrait that still hangs on the wall, dusty and old.

The woman stares at the two of them with piercing blue eyes, chest heaving and blonde hair tumbling to her shoulders out of the worn out cap she’s wearing.

He’s already halfway through a sentence to berate her when his brain makes the connection to the young girl painted behind her, and he trails off to stare in wonderment. She squints at him, squirms under his gaze.

He leans into Octavia, whispers in her ear, “Do you see that?”

She raises a skeptical eyebrow at him, but dutifully looks up at the woman, and when her eyes widen he grins, knowing his sister’s caught on. He starts up the stairs towards her.

“Look,” she says, oblivious to the siblings’ scheming, “are you Bellamy? I need travel papers, and someone told me I should come to you.” He’s circling her, studying her, and she notices and stops her speaking to glare at him, twisting with him. “Were you dropped on your head as a child?”

“Sorry,” he says, finally stopping. He looks over to O briefly, but she’s now caught up with the dog the woman apparently brought with her, cooing at it. He sighs. “What’d you say your name was?”

“Clarke,” the woman answers, jutting her chin in the air. “Can you help me or not?”

And Bellamy does what he does best: he cons his ass off.

See, he and Octavia are stuck in a gloomy city, in an even gloomier country, and if they ever want to change that, they need the reward money the Tsar—excused only because by the time he resurfaced no one much cared, the rest of the family was dead or forgotten, and he didn’t have royal blood anyways—is offering up to anyone who can bring his daughter back to him. Bellamy’s got one thing on his side, and that’s the music box tucked away in the pocket of his coat. As long as he brings someone to Polis who looks vaguely like the princess, the music box will seal the deal for them.

And Clarke is the spitting image of her.

So, he plays her, uses her amnesia as an advantage and plants the seed in her mind that who knows, she could be the princess Arcadia’s spent a decade wondering the whereabouts of. And besides, no harm in trying, right? It would get her to Polis, which is where she wants to go.

He leaves her staring at another painting of the princess, this time only with her father, fingers wrapped around her other wrist, tugs O away from the puppy and her owner. She knows what he’s doing, smiles behind her palm and counts down on her fingers with him to the exact moment Clarke calls out, “Bellamy!” and comes rushing back towards them.

“It’s worth a shot, right?” she says, with a little shrug. Octavia grins and nods, and Bellamy follows her lead.

Just like that, they’ve got their girl.

A day later, and they’re on a train headed to Polis, fake travelling papers and fake princess in tow. Bellamy and Clarke, it seems, are hell-bent on bickering their way through their time together. It starts at the train station, where she argues that why should she be carrying her own luggage if she’s a princess, huh? He scowls at her but can’t argue, but bites back that she’s taken on her roll quickly. They only get worse from there.

Octavia sits in the far corner of the train carriage, Clarke’s puppy—Monty, he learns is its name—in her lap, marking down in a book who wins every argument. She only shows it to Clarke, who will in turn look at him and smirk smugly, so he knows she’s winning. He glares bat both of them.

She falls asleep sprawled across one side of the seats, Monty having abandoned Octavia to curl up against her chest. He wraps a hand around her ankle, meaning to move her feet so he can sit, and she screams awake, one flailing hand catching him in the chest and the other the face.

“What the hell!” she gasps out, a hand pressed to her throat. He groans, presses his own hands to his burning face, tries to get air passed the sudden ache in her chest.

“You pack quite a hit,” Octavia tells her while hovering next to his crouched form. He thinks he hears pride in her voice, and immediately resents her for it.

“You are not the one who should be pissed off,” he manages finally, looking at Clarke. She’s curled up, now, pressed to the wall behind her, Monty sitting at her feet with his teeth bared. All his anger dissipates at the blatant fear in her eyes, clear as day although the only outward sign of it are her hands curled around her ankles protectively.

He does _not_ get this girl.

“Whatever,” he mutters before she or Octavia can say anything else, pushing his way out of the compartment.

His walk is short-lived, however, when he passes a compartment and overhears a conversation about the changing colours of exit papers. He curses and turns around, rushes back to their compartment.

It only takes them a few minutes to get everything and make their way to the luggage car. Clarke doesn’t offer up any complaints—surprisingly—just sarcasm.

“I’m sure this isn’t because of our papers, right?” she asks innocently, curling her coat tighter around herself.

“Of course not, Princess,” he says, gives her a fake smile.

“Bellamy,” Octavia says then, and the nervous tint to her voice has him turning around immediately.

“What is it?” He asks. Before either of them can say anything else, there’s a rattle, and then they’re pitching sideways as their car, along with the engine in front of them,  detaches from the rest of the train.

Clarke lets out a groan, and sits up to look out the doorway that now leads to nothing but track and snow. Bellamy moves to stand and holds out a hand to help her up. She stumbles, but catches herself before he has a chance to steady her. He leaves her there on shaky legs and goes to her sister. She’s looking through the other side’s door, down the compartment to the engine.

“It’s fried,” she says, voice uneven, gives him a frightened look out of the corner of her eye. “Someone rigged it.”

“I’ll go check it out,” he says, shoves the door aside. The wind whipping past them is harsh and unforgiving, but he manages to make his way into the engine room without much of a problem. It’s burning hot, and empty. There’s no way for him to stop it, and no one there to do it for him.

They’re fucked, basically.

He makes his way back to Clarke and Octavia, who are standing in the doorway, each of them gripping a side. Neither of them look particularly optimistic, so he guesses they’ve already figured out what he’s seen.

“We need to disconnect from the engine,” Octavia says, launching them all into action. She digs out a tool set and he goes back out, using the tools she hands him to try and disconnect them from the flaming engine. It’s like they’ve been welded together, though, and he breaks the wrench he’s been handed on a hard hit. He yells in frustration.

“Give me something harder!” he yells, and then Clarke’s there, handing him a stick of dynamite, of all things. He looks at her, wide-eyed, and she shrugs but her eyes have this wild, thrilled look in them. She waits calmly while he sets it firmly, as if they have all the time in the world, and then grabs his hand and pulls him up and in, all the way to the back of the car where Octavia’s already crouched behind a large box. She still looked rather unfazed, even as she presses her hands over her ears.

“What the hell kind of orphanage did you go to?” he mutters, hears Clarke snort. And the dynamite blows.

So they’re disconnected from the engine, which happily speeds beyond them, but they’re still going damn fast. Clarke shoots him a nervous look.

“We’ll slow down eventually, with enough track,” he reasons.

“I don’t think we have enough,” she shoots back, points out a window. He curses inwardly, looks out the window she’s looking through to see the nearby bridge is blown out.

It seriously feels like something is working against them, at this point.

Without anything else to do but die, he looks around and finds a heavy enough looking chain. He drags it over to the side of the train car that isn’t blown out, yelling for Octavia to help him as he sets himself to climbing halfway under the train. It’s Clarke, though, that ends up passing him the chain and hovering above him.

“Octavia’s busy,” is all she says although there isn’t a lot to be busy _with_ , but he just rolls his eyes and sets to wrapping the chain around a bar on the underside. As he’s coming up, he almost falls off, a wayward piece of the track throwing him off balance. It’s only Clarke’s hand, small and firm, gripping his shirt collar and dragging him up with unseen strength that keeps him from dying quite horrifically right then.

They shove the chain out together, and as the car lurches again, he mutters, “Remind me to thank you later.”

They end up jumping, landing in a heap in the troughed up snow. Monty’s half buried in all the powder and to be honest, the rest of them are too, but they’re alive at least.

“You picked a hell of a station to stop at,” Clarke says. Octavia lets out a hysterical giggle, and he lolls his head over the snow pillow he’s got going to look at Clarke.

“Whatever, Princess,” he says, but they’re both grinning.

It’s a while before they all get up from that snow drift.

_♬♬_

They walk for a while, and Clarke only complains when she convinces herself they’re going to make her walk to Polis. She’s content with a bus and a boat, though, and slips into silence again. As they walk, Monty in Octavia’s arms and all her attention permanently on the puppy, he lets himself watch her. Her hat’s long gone, lost in the wind, and her hair hangs in her face even with half of it pulled back and up. Her clothes are wind-beaten, coat in the bag Bellamy’s carrying. The fingers of her left hand constantly dance across the watch on her left wrist, like she was doing back at the palace.

He knows what it is, what it represents to her. On the underside of it, carved delicately into the metal, are three words: _Together in Polis._ She doesn’t know who it’s from, but it’s the reason she’s here right now, so he’s not complaining.

What she does get mad about though is not the walking, but rather the Tsar’s cousin Raven. It’s pretty customary that anyone who is supposedly the missing princess to prove themselves to Raven first, but they’d carefully kept that from Clarke for the time being. Of course, Octavia throws that right out the door when she starts lamenting about Raven and Bellamy has to explain.

“No one ever told me I’d have to prove myself!” she yells, crossing her arms. She shakes her head. “I don’t want to lie, Bellamy.”

“You don’t know if it’s lying,” he wheedles, although he doesn’t believe it. All that matters is that she does.

Clarke rubs at her forehead with a hand, and sighs. “I don’t know anything about what she would ask me,” she says finally, and he cheers inwardly. He can work with this. Getting an arm around her shoulders, he leads her over to where Octavia’s gone off to let Monty drink from the river that’s nearby.

“We can teach you,” he promises. “Octavia’s an expert on all things royal.”

“Yeah?” Clarke says, skeptically. He’s getting her, though. Octavia knows it too, because she grabs for Clarke’s hands and looks her right in the eyes.

“Promise,” she swears. Clarke’s shoulders relax, and she nods. Bellamy grins.

So they make their way to through the country, hitching rides occasionally but mostly walking. All the while they’re quizzing her on bloodlines that they’re convincing her she’s a part of, and on ones from other countries too. Octavia teaches her all the dos and don’ts of being a princess—she has a serious slouching problem, he’s seriously considering picking up a stick and hitting her in the back at random times. She calls it stupid multiple times, like when she’s balancing on a log they came across on one foot or has a book on her head while Bellamy throws out rapid fire questions from rulers of Arcadia from fifty years ago, but she never once stops. Her determination is unsettling, and thrilling.

He convinces himself he doesn’t feel guilt over making her genuinely believe this could be her family, this girl who has not even memories of one. He’s in this for the money, he tells himself. She’s just a part of getting to that goal.

He manages to keep telling himself that until they’re on the boat.

Since the train and all its mishaps, he’s been looking over his shoulder for trouble, and he’s wary about the boat. But Clarke grabs his hand with a wayward sigh and pulls him aboard, and he’s stuck there following her. It’s fine for a while. Octavia looks a little green and quickly escapes below deck to their little room, and he follows soon after, but Clarke stays up. She doesn’t come down until near sunset, with her hair and clothes soaked from sea-spray.

And then she goes up in the middle of the night, after the storm starts. Still asleep.

He’s asleep when she leaves their room, only wakes up when Monty stands on his chest and barks in his face for a solid minute. He shoves the dog off of himself, sees Octavia asleep on the top bunk but the bottom is empty, and finally keys in to what’s driven Monty halfway up the wall.

Bellamy runs outside, drenched within seconds from rain and the ocean, and finds her standing on the railing, precariously close to falling.

“Clarke!” he yells, desperation clawing at his insides, but she’s gone from him, from the world, lost in a dream. Making his way to her is a tough feat, the harsh waves below pitching the boat back and forth. Multiple times, she nearly falls, and he’s just waiting—begging—for her to wake up, but she doesn’t. She looks to be without a care in the world, even as only a hand gently wrapped around a nearby rope and toes perched on the rail are the only things keeping her aboard. Keeping her alive.

He never stops screaming her name.

Just before he reaches her, Clarke seems to catch on to her whereabouts, stumbling back and nearly falling right into him. But the boat pitches with a new, previously unseen wave, and she starts to fall the other way, to the deadly water. He grabs at what might be thin air but instead, blissfully, ends up being the back of her nightshirt. She falls into him then, and the two of them hit the watery deck as she screams awake.

“Bellamy,” she gasps, and cries into the arm that’s wrapped around her waist. “It was so real.”

“Shh,” he murmurs, running his free hand through her hair soothingly. He maneuvers them until she’s in his lap, curled around him. “Clarke, what the hell was that?”

She opens her mouth but all that comes out is a sob and incoherent blubbering. So he just holds her, resting his chin on her head and rocking them back and forth until her sobbing subsides and it’s only the ferocious waves still underneath them he has to worry about.

He should be angry at her, or more curious about why she was up here in the first place, but all he can feel is relief that she’s not dead in the ocean right now.

They make it back to their room, and when she falls, still in soaked clothing, into her bed, she doesn’t let go of his hand.

He wouldn’t dream of letting her go anyways.

_♬♬_

Polis, for all intents and purposes, is pretty damn beautiful.

Octavia and Clarke are enchanted from the get-go, even though for the time being they’re only in the housing area of it. Clarke wears a dress he bought for her in the port town they boarded their boat on, and squirms nervously the whole car ride to Raven’s. Bellamy finally puts a hand on her knee to calm her, and she flits her eyes to him, nervousness obvious in whole being.

“I didn’t even have a past a week ago,” she says, hands twisting in the blue fabric of the dress’s skirt, pooled in her lap. “How am I going to do this, Bellamy? I feel so panicked”

“That’s what you’ve got me for,” he says, and she manages a smile for him. They pull up at Raven’s shortly thereafter.

Raven and Octavia do their usual cooing and squealing at each other, but Raven’s been doing these interviews for a while, and she gets down to business quickly. Clarke sits in a chair, Bellamy leaning on the wall behind her by the mantle. For all her nervous energy on the way here, she’s completely calm now, answering any question Raven thinks to throw at her.

“Okay, last one,” Raven says finally, after what feels like hours. She leans back, crosses her legs and keeps her piercing eyes on Clarke. “How’d you escape the palace, the night of the siege?”

Clarke’s mouth twists, and Bellamy curses himself for not thinking of it. He’s an idiot, a true idiot. _Of course_ Raven would want to know that—it’s a question asked by every single person in Arcadia, the only question no one can really answer.

But Clarke does. (She never stops surprising him.)

After a sizable pause, she opens her mouth and says slowly, “There was a boy. A servant, maybe? He opened a wall, guided us through…” she trails off, laughs at herself, and he’s left staring at the back of her head.

She’s the real princess.

It makes Bellamy’s head spin and his hands grab at the wall behind him, seeking purchase so he won’t fall over.

The palace siege is far back in his mind but still crystal clear, and there’s not a doubt in his mind that the one memory Clarke happens to have of before the age of nine matches his exactly.

She’s real.

He actually found her.

He’s aware of Octavia wheedling out a meeting with the Tsar from Raven, and Clarke’s excitement that the other two join in, but it’s not really computing all the way. He goes outside.

Subconsciously, Bellamy was always looking for her. The princess whose music box is a heavy weight in every coat he wears out, kept even when every other belonging wasn’t. The princess who he was always enchanted with when he—they—were young, swirling around at parties and with laughter like church bells, deep and unique but no less musical for it. The princess who he thought he saved, but never knew for sure.

Until now.

Octavia’s shaking him, telling him to celebrate, that they did it, but he can’t focus on it. He can’t focus on anything, until Clarke’s coming out of the house, spinning and celebrating and squealing about Raven taking them out for the day.

Bellamy spends most of the day staring after Clarke, barely even aware of the different shops they’re in or when Octavia shoves better clothes at him—“For the ballet, Christ, Bell, you look like you’ve been sleeping in a mud puddle”—and Raven tosses a credit card at him carelessly to pay for it. Clarke tries on increasingly more lavish dresses that would make her more beautiful, except she’s been beautiful from the start.

Finally, he and Octavia separate from the other two an hour before the ballet’s supposed to start, so that Raven can help Clarke get ready. They make it to there before the girls do, and sit outside waiting.

“I hope it goes okay,” Octavia says, taking off one of the white gloves that goes up to her elbow and wringing it in her hands.

“It’ll be fine,” Bellamy promises. “She’s the princess.”

Octavia waves him off. “I know,” she huffs.

“No, Octavia,” Bellamy says, grabbing for her wrist to get her attention. He needs her to understand, suddenly. “I was that servant boy.”

Octavia’s eyebrows first furrow but then raise high. “Holy shit,” she breathes. “So Clarke is actually…”

“The lost princess,” Bellamy confirms, and then sighs.

“You’re in love with her,” Octavia accuses, or maybe means to, because her voice is too soft. She sits down next to him, flops onto the step and looks at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Nothing,” Bellamy says harshly, standing up and away from her. “Nothing,” he repeats, just as much to himself as to her. “We go as planned, and then we and Clarke go our separate ways. Got it?”

Octavia shakes her head. “Bell,” is all she says, hope drained, but it’s all she gets a chance to say before a car pulls up and Raven steps out, waving. Bellamy looks at his sister sharply, asking silently what she’s going to do, but she just gives a little shrug and murmurs, “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” he whispers. They both know he’s lying.

Clarke looks absolutely gorgeous, usually wavy hair curled into gentle blond ringlets that bounce with every head movement. Her watch has been replaced by a thin bracelet that shines like diamonds, and Bellamy belatedly realizes that it probably is. Her dress, made of a deep red, floats down her body and clings to her curves, glittering in the light from the fancy chandelier hanging above her.

She smiles up at him from the upper steps, looking so much like the princess she’s always been. He rushes up to her, but still feels below her even when they’re on equal footing and her heels still put her a few inches below him,

They sit in a balcony far away from the stage, Octavia a row behind them. When Clarke brings up her opera glasses, gotten from who knows where, he points out the Tsar sitting with Raven, in a balcony nearly directly above the stage.

“Please remember me,” Clarke whispers, not to him. Bellamy grips her hand, and doesn’t let go until the end of the show. She squeezes his fingers rhythmically throughout it, barely even glancing at the dancers on the stage.

To be fair, he’s mostly looking at her.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Bellamy says later, when they’re standing outside the door that leads to the Tsar balcony. Raven’s on the other side, talking to him; Bellamy can hear her, barely.

“Bellamy,” Clarke starts, but then stops immediately. There’s hope bubbling in his chest that he tries to stamp down, for _something_ that says she isn’t ready to end this either to come out of her mouth, but all she says when she speaks again is, “Thank you.”

He smiles tightly, drops his gaze. Doesn’t see the same feeling he just had reflected in her eyes up until the moment he says “Good luck,” and then promptly flees into the room.

(Not closing the door all the way is probably one of the worst mistakes he’s ever made.)

The former Tsar isn’t even at forty yet, but he looks impossibly tired, and sad.

“Please just let me live out the rest of my miserable life alone, in peace,” he says, and Bellamy would feel guilty if he didn’t know for a fact that his daughter was standing outside, impossibly anxious and oh so alone.

“Just let me,” Bellamy starts, meaning to explain to him that he was the one who got him and his daughter out, but the Tsar never gives him a chance, instead going on about hearing of Bellamy’s cons, his search for an actress to play the part for the money. Raven gives him a sad look but then shoves him out the door, bringing him face to face with a tearful Clarke.

“Clarke,” is all he gets out, but she cuts him off with a sharp shake of her head and a push to his chest.

“No,” she says, voice choked. “No, you don’t get to say anything. Bellamy, you _lied_. You let me believe you were helping me, but you were using me, this whole time! For that poor man’s money!”

“Only at the beginning,” he says helplessly, and she scoffs, turns away. He grabs for her hand, the one he held all through the ballet, but she wrangles it out of his grasp, turning back, to poke at his chest with a freshly manicured finger.

“You have family,” she says, breathless and in such obvious pain. “You have Octavia, always. I have _nobody_. I don’t even have memories of them! And you convinced me I did, for your own benefit. For money! Stay away from me, Bellamy.”

He makes one final start for her, but she slaps him and runs off before he can say anything.

By the time he makes it outside she’s gone.

He spends a good—well, he’d call it good, Octavia would call it pathetic—amount of time out there in the cold, sulking. Sulking, and then, eventually, scheming. By the time a car comes around and the Tsar exits the opera hall, Bellamy has a plan.

He beats the driver to the wheel, gets in and drives off before the Tsar can figure out what’s happening.

“You just don’t quit, do you?” he says once he does, sighing. Arguing has apparently been deemed useless by him, which is a wise move. Bellamy wouldn’t listen.

“Not until you talk to her,” Bellamy says firmly, and the man sighs again, but doesn’t say anything further.

Bellamy pulls to a stop in front of the small apartment building Raven owns and let them use for their time in the city, getting out of the car and running around to open the Tsar’s door. Once there, he pulls out the music box, and waits for him to recognize it.

“Where did you get this?” he finally asks, voice rough. His fingers reach out and drag across the smooth surface, wrap around it and take it out of Bellamy’s palm.

“Now will you talk to her?” he asks instead of answering. The Tsar sighs, but nods.

_♬♬_

He doesn’t know how the meeting goes, just watches the Tsar go up the steps to Clarke’s room and then not come down within a minute, demanding to go home. Once the minute passes, Bellamy goes outside, a sad smile on his lips and heart heavy, wishing desperately that Clarke gets to be happy now.

(Later, she’ll tell him what a great moment it was, how memories of her father flooded back to her in a rush. How the back of her watch pops off to become a key to turn on the music box. How finally hugging her father felt like coming home after being gone for far too long.)

For now, Bellamy just leaves.

_♬♬_

Octavia calls him a week later.

He’s been staying at an inn at the edge of town, while she’s been staying with Raven. The offer had been extended to him too, but he’d declined. Raven’s the Tsar’s cousin, which makes her Clarke’s family too. And he needs the space.

He could go back to Arcadia, of course. But he’s not ready for that much space, yet.

“He wants to meet with us,” is all she says, knowing he’ll know who she’s talking about, but Bellamy can tell by her voice she wants to say more. He asks for the when and the where—in an hour, at the Tsar’s home—and then they’re both left sitting in silence on two ends of a phone call.

“She loves you too, you know,” Octavia says after far too much silence, and promptly hangs up.

Slowly, he puts the phone back in its cradle. Thinks over his sister’s words.

Doesn’t let himself dwell on her being right for long, focuses instead on all the reasons she’s wrong.

Clarke’s a princess, his head says. (She was an orphan for longer, his heart replies.)

She hated him when they met. (He hated her, too.)

She could’ve said so many things outside that door, but all she did was thank him. (All he did was wish her luck.)

He blocks the thoughts completely and starts getting ready to leave.

_♬♬_

Seeing Clarke again is hard.

Seeing her looking like the princess she now is—always has been—is harder.

He only catches a glimpse of her as he’s leaving, having refused the money from the Tsar, her father. Her mouth opens in surprise at the sight of him, but she stays where she is even as her hands twitch and emotions dance in the blue of her eyes.

God, he was fucked from the beginning with her.

She might say his name, but he’s out the door before he can know for sure.

“What do we do now?” Octavia asks, already outside. He sighs.

“You go back to Raven,” he says, a small smile lighting up his face despite everything. Raven really does love his sister, and Octavia loves her, and not being in separate countries will probably do them some good.

“And you?” Octavia asks. He pulls her into him with an arm around her shoulders, kisses the top of her head.

“I find a way back to Arcadia,” he says, and then adds quietly, still pressed to her hair, “And try to find a way past this.”

Octavia wraps one of her own arms around his waist and squeezes tight.

_♬♬_

Bellamy doesn’t leave Polis. Can’t even stand the thought of it, really. Or at least, not of leaving Clarke.

Her father’s throwing a lavish party to celebrate finally finding her after all these years. Octavia goes with Raven, and extends the invitation to Bellamy when she finds out he’s still in town.

He genuinely isn’t going to go, but when he leaves the little inn he’s staying at late in the evening for a walk, he somehow ends up on a trail that overlooks the sea but also happens to lead to the garden that makes up the majority of Clarke’s backyard.

And this is where things get strange.

He sees her sprawled on the ground, not getting up but staring at the man standing over her menacingly. Bellamy doesn’t know who he is, but he doesn’t particularly care. The glare Clarke has levelled at him is the same one she used on him when they first knew each other, but there’s fear in her body language.

So he tackles the guy.

And then gets promptly knocked out for his efforts.

The next minute—or hour, Bellamy’s not really sure, he was a little busy being unconscious—Clarke is shaking him, yelling his name and crying. Relief surges through him, quick and overpowering and waking him up completely, that she isn’t dead. And then pride, because whoever the hell was there trying to hurt her, she took down, all on her own.

He can’t quite open his eyes, but her head hits his chest and he’s at least able to bring a hand up to run soothingly through her hair.

“Easy, princess,” he mumbles, hears her gasp, feels her head shoot up. He finally gets his eyes open, and the first thing he sees is her blinding blue ones, staring down at him with open relief and—love?

“Oh thank God,” she says, and then she kisses him.

She pulls back after only a second, and he probably know looks like a love-struck idiot, but she smiles softly at him and helps him sit up. Then she leans her head into his shoulder and just breathes him in.

Her dress is ripped, her makeup is smeared, and there’s the remnants of what probably used to be a crown a few feet away from them. More than that, though, there’s a wetness around her eyes from unshed tears, and her whole body shakes against his.

“Clarke,” he prods gently, “who was that?”

She lets out a shaky breath, and he feels it against his neck. But then she smiles, shakes her head and looks up at him. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “He’s gone, and you’re here.”

Part of him wants to push, wants to know. He has his suspicions, because she is, after all, the official heir to the throne of Arcadia and therefore a threat to many. Most of him, though, just wants to be here with her, wants to bask in it.

So he presses his lips into her forehead, noting the way her eyes flutter closed and her body relaxes, and says, “And so are you.”

“I love you,” she blurts, which surprises him. He pulls away, but only just enough to see her face. She looks desperate, and scared. “I don’t want you to leave again.”

“I don’t want to leave again,” he admits, and then, “I love you too, by the way. Have for a while, really.”

Her whole face lights up at that, and she surges forward to kiss him again. He laughs into it, gets his arm around her waist and hauls her into his lap.

“Let’s get married,” she murmurs against his lips, wrapping her arms around his neck so he can’t pull away. He wasn’t going to anyway, though. He’s done with that.

Frankly, he’s done with anything that doesn’t involve her.

So he says, “Okay.”

Her smile only widen when he adds, “Tonight.”

“You read my mind,” she says, laughing.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://lindseymorgan.tumblr.com/)


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